“Run that by me again,” said Frank.
“I’ll tell you a story,” said Lino. “The last time Nicky came home from the service—it was right after VJ Day, you remember—he says hello and doesn’t say another word for two weeks. Okay, I figure, the guy doesn’t want to talk about it. Then one night we’re sitting out here after supper, Catherine’s in her room, Nicky opens up.
“‘The whole thing was like a bad dream,’ he says.
“‘Jesus,’ I say. ‘That bad, huh?’
“‘Except for one night,’ he says, and I know from the tone of his voice it’s got something to do with a girl.
“‘Ah hah,’ I say. ‘Some poor little fraulein’s crying her eyes out for Nicky Falconetti.’
“He looks at me like I’m crazy.
“‘It was a USO show,’ he says. ‘Except for that, it was like I was dreaming the whole time. The fighting, the blood, then they had me working on radio communications for the high command … it was like I was watching myself, I just couldn’t wake up. And then one night—it was at the base in Landstuhl—I went to the USO show. Risë Stevens came on, she was singing “Un Bel Di” from Madame Butterfly. It was so beautiful, I couldn’t believe it. All of a sudden I woke up and listened. Then she quit singing, the guys applauded—they were waiting for Bob Hope the whole time—and I fell asleep again….’”
Lino looked at Joseph and Frank.
“I still don’t get it,” said Frank. “What’s that got to do with re-enlisting?”
“Use your head.” Lino tapped his skull. “Where’s the action these days?”
“Korea.”
“Exactly,” said Lino. “Mark my words. Nicky’s going to come home with Madame Butterfly and a couple of slanty-eyed babies.”
Though Joseph couldn’t follow Lino’s logic, one thing was clear:
“Well, looks like that’s the end of the pinochle game.”
“How about Augie?” said Frank. “We could ask him to sit in. He’d be flattered.”
“Fat chance,” said Joseph. “You think Augie’s dumb enough to commute in from the Island for a pinochle game?”
Augie Santangelo wasn’t stupid, just extremely good-natured and eager to help Joseph get over his loss. He pretended to be flattered, and drove in the next night.
Despite Augie’s hereditary addiction to cheap cigars, his presence seemed to bring a breath of fresh Long Island sea air into Lino’s musty apartment. Determined to help Augie maintain his high spirits, Frank Manzone threw the first few hands his way. But Augie’s geniality was no match for Joseph’s unhappiness, and his enthusiasm only irritated Lino, who’d grown accustomed to Nicky’s listlessness. Vaguely distrustful of his bright new partner, Lino felt the sting of his son’s defection.
The game dragged on for an hour until Augie laughed and said, “Gentlemen, correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought the point of pinochle was, you play to win.”
“We’re playing,” said Frank Manzone. “We’re playing. Anyhow, what are you complaining about? You’re winning, it’s me and Joey that are down.”
“That’s what I’m complaining about,” said Augie. “How does it look, me cleaning out my own baby brother? Well, thanks a million. I guess I’ll be getting home, maybe catch a little television with Evelyn and the kids.”
“Television!” cried Lino. “Don’t mention that word in this house.”
“See you, Augie,” said Joseph. “Tell Evelyn to come around, pick up some of Mama’s sausage. Give the twins a big kiss for me.”
“Sure,” said Augie. “Take it easy.”
Joseph went home, undressed in the dark and eased into bed. Asleep on her back, lit through the blue curtains, Catherine looked like a statue on a tombstone. When Joseph brushed against her, she rolled onto her side and curled away from him. He’d learned to sleep without moving, as if he were lying beside her on the same stone slab. This particular tomb, he noticed, smelled of chicken soup with escarole, beef broth with pastina, the baby food which his mother cooked specially for Catherine and which Catherine refused to touch. Also there was the pungent odor of dying plants—Catherine’s treasures dying from neglect because no one had the energy to water them or the heart to throw them out.
It was the end of everything which Joseph had taken for granted—not only the joys of married life, but the milder and more dependable pleasures of his mother’s cooking. Each night, he ate dinner with his mother, as he had in his bachelor days. Back then, she could really pack the food away, though she spent the whole meal on her feet, running to the kitchen, boasting that God didn’t give her time to eat. But now she sat opposite him, chewing the soft part of her bread and leaving the crust.
“Eat,” she urged him. “Your Mama won’t be around to cook for you forever.”
Meanwhile she entertained him with the neighborhood news. Mrs. Santangelo had always had a fine ear for gossip, but now it was tuned to only one frequency:
“Guess what? Mrs. Imperato’s Daniel, a young man, fifty-four years old. Cancer of the colon. And old Mrs. Tessatore, yesterday morning her son goes to take her some groceries—thank God he’s got a key—the old lady’s dead on the bathroom floor. So little Ronnie DeFalco, he’s starting the barbeque in his brother-in-law’s backyard, one squirt of lighter fluid—whoosh! Burns over sixty percent of his body.”
“Jeez,” said Joseph. “That’s awful. But how come nobody’s getting married anymore, having babies? To hear you talk, everybody’s dying. Nobody’s getting born.”
“Nothing’s beginning. Everything’s coming to an end. Eat.”
Joseph couldn’t eat. It was not just the litany of death and horror ruining his appetite, but also a physical problem: he could barely swallow. The gluey pasta stuck to the roof of his mouth. The watery tomato sauce was so overseasoned that the pepper bit his throat. Everything tasted slightly spoiled.
Pushing the food around his plate, Joseph recalled that travesty of a meal which Catherine served them in her father’s house. And now, he thought, his mother’s prophecy was coming true. He had married Catherine, and his life tasted like that meal—worse, in fact, because he really did remember the antipasto with pleasure. Now there was no pleasure anywhere, and his future looked as gloomy as one of his mother’s stories.
“Either it’s the end of me,” Joseph thought, “or it’s the end of my mother’s cooking.”
It was almost the end of Joseph’s business.
One Saturday morning, Evelyn came into the shop, so solicitous and subdued, so brimming with concern that Joseph, who’d given her ten pounds of sausage two days before, assumed she was ashamed to be coming back for more so soon.
“Gee, the kids must have liked that sausage.”
“Joseph,” said Evelyn, “how’s Mama?”
“Fine,” lied Joseph.
“Joseph.” Evelyn affected a stage whisper. “Me and Augie and the kids were throwing up all night.”
“That’s terrible. You do look a little green….”
“I know what you’re thinking. So I’m not the best cook in the world. I’ll admit it, I’ve ruined a meal or two in my time. But never that bad. Joseph, the sausage … My Stacey says, ‘Mommy, this sausage tastes like dog food.’”
“Smart kid, that Stacey.”
“Joseph.” This was too important for Evelyn to be distracted by compliments. “I said to Augie, ‘Augie, your Mama doesn’t cook like this. Something’s wrong.’ Joseph, I wouldn’t be telling you this …”
“I know you wouldn’t,” said Joseph. “I know all about it. So just don’t go telling anybody else.”
But Joseph’s customers didn’t need Evelyn to tell them that the sausage was inedible—for reasons which varied from batch to batch. Sometimes Mrs. Santangelo went crazy with the spices, adding so much fennel that the links were like licorice sticks, so much pepper that every ulcer in the neighborhood erupted anew: Sometimes she was careless with the grinder, and mothers lost years off their lives fishing bone fragments from thei
r children’s throats.
“That’s how it goes,” said the neighborhood women. “One day you’re cooking for the king. And the next day pigs won’t touch your table scraps.”
Crowds no longer formed in the store on Mondays and Fridays, when Mrs. Santangelo was known to make a fresh batch. No matter how charmingly Joseph flirted, his best customers couldn’t be tempted to round out their orders with a couple of links. Business limped along on chicken, beef, and veal, on the loyalty of faithful customers who kept the Santangelos’ recent misfortunes in mind and forgave them this lapse. Eventually Joseph began to feel so grateful for their patronage that he couldn’t bring himself to cheat them; it was then that he decided to talk things over with his mother.
One night at dinner, she provided him with an opening by tearing the center out of her bread and throwing away the rest.
“At my age,” she said, “who’s got teeth for crust? Old Mrs. Casserta, she’s younger than me, she eats nothing but ricotta and a little cream of wheat.”
“Mama,” said Joseph, “face it. You’re not as young as you used to be. Maybe you’re working too hard.”
“Who else? Who else is going to stuff forty pounds of sausage a week? Your wife? Guess again. Your wife won’t get up to water her plants. It looks like the Sahara Desert in here.”
“Who’s to stop you from watering them?” Joseph pointed at the pots of dirt and twigs. “It’s depressing.”
“Me water them?” Mrs. Santangelo charged an imaginary jury to judge the outrageousness of this. “Already I’m the cook and the maid and now he wants me to be the gardener.”
“Forget it. Catherine will take care of it when she gets better.”
“Gets better? How long do you think it takes? Three days after you and Augie were born, I was up on my feet, washing diapers. Your wife’s been flat on her back eight months!”
“It takes time….”
“Time? It takes a miracle. A miracle’s what it will take to get her out of bed.”
Joseph didn’t answer. After a while his mother said, “You look a little pale.”
“I’m fine. Just thinking.”
He’d been thinking of something Catherine had said the night before.
By now, it had become a nightly ritual, a regular mating dance in reverse. As soon as Joseph got into bed, Catherine scooted to the far edge and pretended to be asleep. Last night, though, Joseph had been too upset to play along.
“Listen,” he said, “I’m worried about Mama. It’s the sausage, the customers are complaining … I think she’s losing her marbles.”
“So what?” said Catherine. “She could stuff those casings with rat poison, what difference would it make?”
Joseph didn’t often cross himself, but now he did, and kissed his fingertips for good measure.
“You know what difference it would make.”
“Maybe. And maybe I don’t.”
“Catherine, it’s not the end of the world. The last hand hasn’t been dealt yet, the chips haven’t been cashed in. We’re young, we can still have a family.” Then he paused and said, “Not at this rate.”
“I wish it was the end of the world.”
“Maybe you should see a doctor, maybe he could give you a little something to help you get out of bed.”
“Which doctor? The one that showed up six hours after the baby was dead?”
“How about a priest?”
“The only priest you’ll see in this house is the one who comes in to give me the last rites.”
“This can’t go on. You’re nuts, and you’re driving me nuts too.” Then suddenly it occurred to Joseph that Catherine’s problem might, after all, be sexual—as simple and magical as that. Maybe she needed it as much as he did, but, being a woman, was too shy to say. Actually, this theory had crossed his mind before; Catherine had never given him the chance to test it. Now, despite the near-certainty of failure, Joseph reached out for Catherine’s thigh.
Catherine slapped his hand away.
“No thanks,” she said. “None of that.”
“That’s what you said when we first got married.” Joseph forced a laugh. “And look how much fun we had.”
“Look how we paid for that fun.”
“Paid for what? We didn’t do anything wrong. We’re married, we’ve got rights.”
“That was then. And this is now.”
“Okay, you win.” Joseph rolled away from her. “I’ve got the patience of Job. I can wait. I know these things take time.”
“Joseph.” Catherine’s voice was hollow. “It takes more than time. Believe me, Joseph. It would take a miracle to make me do that with you again.”
It was not a time for miracles or even small wonders. Sadness lingered in the house, together with the smell of scorched metal. Mrs. Santangelo couldn’t seem to make tea without letting the water boil out of the pot; it was almost as if the smoke from that Saint Anna medallion had never left the apartment. Catherine’s dead plants sat on the shelves, like the skulls which the saints kept around as constant reminders of mortality.
Mrs. Santangelo had given up hope. What was there to hope for? A child, of course, a child to carry on the line and restore their luck. But the sound of Joseph’s bedsprings suggested that a child was unlikely. These nights, she heard only the erratic shiftings of restlessness, tossing and turning, ill will between husband and wife, and she found herself longing for the squeaks and bounces which used to infuriate her. But how could she ask San Gennaro to make the bedsprings creak like before?
“What will become of us?” she asked aloud. No one answered; even Zio’s spirit had abandoned her in this trying time. “What will become of us?” she repeated, if only to keep from hearing Joseph’s bed and the morbid noises which rose up to her window from Mulberry Street.
All night, the muffled conversations reminded Mrs. Santangelo of whispering mourners, and the hoofbeats of the knife grinder’s horse sounded like those of an animal being led to slaughter. The street was never quiet for more than a second, and during those seconds, she panicked: Everyone was dead. The noises of life would never resume.
The days were no better. Now, when she walked through the neighborhood, the only building she saw was Castellano’s Funeral Home; she imagined her own body laid out among the lilies, viewed as if from a great height. Was it any wonder that the shortest walks left her out of breath, with black spots dancing in front of her eyes?
“Zio,” she said, not daring to hope that he was listening. “If you’re coming, you’d better come quick. If you wait too long, I won’t recognize you.”
Her memory was fading; her knowledge of signs and portents was going first. Two pigeons perched on the windowsill—what did that mean? How could she count the eyes on a potato when she couldn’t remember how many potatoes went into the gnocchi? She forgot the reason for wearing the cornuto she’d worn all her life, forgot that hopelessness was a sin, forgot where to find the priest she was supposed to confess it to.
The only thing she never forgot was her prayers, and eventually they were answered.
Late one night, anise-scented cigar smoke filled her room. Despite her failing memory, she had no trouble recognizing Zio’s brand.
“Zio, help me.” Mrs. Santangelo had waited too long to waste time on pleasantries. “Tell me: What will become of us? What’s there to hope for?”
“Hope for a miracle,” said Zio.
“What kind of miracle?” she asked, forgetting that Zio, in his spiritual state, resisted direct questions.
“The only miracle we can hope for,” he said.
It was not a time for miracles. In all those months, the strangest thing that happened was that Nicky showed up—unannounced, still in uniform and apparently unhurt—at Lino’s door.
Lino reached out to shake his son’s hand, but Nicky just stood there, encumbered by the heavy duffel bag he was carrying in one hand, the thin, lacquered sword case in the other. It was this sword case, this samurai souvenir, which rem
inded Lino of all the missed pinochle games, the hours of pleasure sacrificed to Nicky’s idiotic dreams, and so irritated him that he said, “Where’s Madame Butterfly?”
Nicky squeezed past him through the door. How could he have explained that until seventy-two hours ago, when the troop plane took off from the air base near Yokohama, Madame Butterfly had been everywhere, always but never quite within reach?
For the truth was as Lino had suspected, that Nicky had reenlisted in search of a Japanese wife. He imagined her in a kimono, white socks and those high wooden sandals, fluttering from room to room in his Mulberry Street apartment. His geisha-wife would light incense, pour tea, set bowls of formally arranged flowers in the places where Catherine’s ugly houseplants used to be; she would blush and vanish behind a rice paper screen whenever a stranger entered the house.
Admittedly it was an incongruous vision, but the very incongruity of it struck Nicky with a piercing beauty which only made him desire it more. Their lives would smell of joss sticks and not of garlic and frying sausage; their days would be scored to a delicate blend of opera and koto music. Instead of pinochle, they’d play go and those coy games the geishas played with sake cups and disappearing shells.
On enlisting, he extracted a promise from the recruiting officer which the army honored: He was sent to Japan. There, he saw other men living out his dreams, half the company sleeping with Japanese girls, the other half boasting about it. A few were even marrying war brides, braving bureaucratic hell and high water to bring them back home.
The soldiers were generous with advice on how to meet girls, and Nicky did what they said. They told him to eat in local restaurants—he haunted every sushi bar and noodle parlor in Kyoto. They suggested public transportation—he took trams for short distances he could have walked. Dutifully, he accompanied his bunkmates to off-limits nightclubs and drank huge quantities of watered scotch. Still, somehow, he could never seem to find the proper approach; even the B-girls shied away from him. Besides, it seemed impossible that Madame Butterfly would be working in one of those sleazy, neon-lit bars; and the pimps who hissed at him from the doorways of the red-light district were nothing like Goro, Puccini’s little “marriage-broker.”
Household Saints Page 9